Broadband erbium-doped fiber sources have emerged as promising sources for navigation-grade fiber-optic gyroscope owing to their excellent thermal stability of the spectrum as well as the high power output[1]. Various source configurations have been investigated for the higher output power and the broader bandwidth with more stable mean wavelength[2]. Among them, fiber amplifier source (FAS) configuration[3] is worthy of note. In this configuration, the doped fiber acts not only as a source but also as an amplifier of the returning gyro signal, resulting in two or three orders improvement in the detected power. However, this configuration also has an apparent disadvantage that the source characteristics (especially spectrum) are very sensitive to the feedback from the gyro as the source cannot be isolated, which may lead to the scale factor instability. In this respect, the FAS configuration has been thought more adequate for the closed-loop gyro rather than for the open-loop gyro. In this paper, a feedback-insensitive operation condition of open-loop fiber-optic gyro employing erbium-doped FAS was investigated to stabilize the scale factor despite the existence of feedback.

Paper Details

Date Published: 1 September 1996PDF: 2 pagesProc. SPIE 2778, 17th Congress of the International Commission for Optics: Optics for Science and New Technology, 2778ES (1 September 1996); doi: 10.1117/12.2316221